The president-elect of the European Commission has succeeded in one of his first objectives - getting more women nominated to be commissioners.... It will be the strongest female representation since the Commission was created in 1957. The Commission headed by outgoing Commission President Romano Prodi featured seven women out of 30 members.

Still - and there's always a downside isn't there - I wish that there were already a representative number of women in the European Commission without having to resort to some kind of affirmative action. The human race will truly have made progress when EU commissioners - and everyone else - are judged on their talent regardless of gender, ethnicity or creed.

"A new family code in Morocco, known as the Mudawana, is having differing effects on women's rights in the Islamic kingdom and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which falls under Moroccan rule."

There is a human tendency - related to the survival of the species - to focus on and remember bad things and neglect the positive. It's good to know that - at least until this new law was passed - the Saharawi women in the Western Sahara had worked out an excellent way of dealing with wife beaters in their society: shunning and shaming. Again, according to the BBC report:

"For us, if a man beats his wife, he is no longer a man, he is a dog," said Salka, a 45-year-old Saharawi woman, recently divorced for the second time.

In the Western Sahara, if a man beats his wife the minimum he must do to ask her forgiveness is hold a second wedding, with all the gifts of camels and jewellery that entails.

Even so, he will rarely be successful in convincing his wife to return.

Unfortunately, because the new law is the same for everyone, the Saharawi women have actually taken a step backwards so that their sisters in Morocco can be assured of not being beaten by their husbands and even thrown into the streets to starve with their children (now, in Morocco, the spouse who has custody gets to keep the house - I wish that were true in Brazil!).